Happy New Year to everyone at King’s Department of English! Over the festive holidays, Kings students have been hard at work on assignments, but they’ve also been developing their own unique projects, using the skills they’re honing through their studies of literature.
We were absolutely delighted to be contacted by Vaani, a first-year undergraduate studying English Literature at King’s College London. She shared with us some of her incredibly rich and vivid poetry, along with an insightful analysis and the personal story behind her work. So, settle in with a cup of tea and a biscuit, and prepare to be transported.
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Love Echoed
By Vaani Walia
Rolls like sunset gazed on a moonlit hour arriving at break,
soon no sand be warm to keep,
when water under the moon is kept silent and tonight a little weak.
That tormenting voice shuns quiet and deep,
Love in embrace, Love in tonality kept and it silently speaks.
Sparing rejection for the night is young and hearts are weak.
For minds are full and eyes lull to sleep.
Barefoot we walked on shores now cold, dry and deep,
with minds restless and hearts, venom sedated weep,
nibbles on my shoulder thunders me weak.
Drawing me imperfect, love impersonates the desire to preach –
like a dandelion locket on a necklace to keep –
slurps me like a parched bird drinks beyond infinite reach.
Love rows me by declared sunsets, as morrow is broken into words said in admiration too stunned to speak,
across you land from a land of impersonating belief I am taken by the sign left enchanted and broken to sweep,
till nights grow young and weak,
makes me frail with acquaintance till lips are coloured in the tints of thee.
My eyes are lulled to merry sleeps, and love is more than a night’s relief.
“I am the shore and you the infinite sea.
Moon be our home, and sun be our loop of all breaths breathed.”
Inspiration:
What inspired me to write, Love Echoed, was the transcendence that love has and how everything around us is metaphorically present in one way or the other. Everything in this poem has everything to do with oneness. How there is a thread between all things that weave us together, from loving another soul to having the entirety of the world be a mirror of our love. Taking the moon, sun and seas as ideal images, my desire was to portray how love has the power to unite us to our surroundings. In a way it is healing and evolutionary, where you find yourself connected with not just yourself and your beloved but to the higher self as well. This poem in fact has a lot to do with the ideas of Sufi mysticism.
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Like a Dove in Gilded Cage
By Vaani Walia
Like a dove in a gilded cage,
You fly through all my awaiting glances.
I seek those sly advances of touch – a slow feathered gliding –
in my soul. I slowly tremble and shake,
For those counterfeit moments I play restless in my mind;
preaching to me joy of forgiveness,
a clear sincerity rakes.
I within thee speak when winds move no more.
I within me rage when your words don’t faintly fade.
I within me satiate desires held for nights longer than days.
I crave and carve nature’s turn, each palpable sane,
for in insanity you so adoringly rage.
When my lips don’t tremble with your name;
when in isolation, the loneliness fades.
When in unions, faith doesn’t shake,
when in hunger, love satiates.
When air between our lungs breathe –
I sigh in moments conventionally weak.
I within me fly innate
when doves in the cage hoover above an empty space.
I within me collapse my rage,
When your thought provokes devotion in isolated sage,
Like a dove in a gilded cage.
Inspiration
What inspired me to write Like a Dove in a Glided Cage, was the idea of devotion to someone with whom you can’t label anything, not because you are unsure of your relationship but because you are more than a label, more than a name. Where you can’t be with them but you only belong with them. To have everything yet nothing. This led to the name of this poem, Like a Dove in a Glided Cage. Where there is nothing around you that makes you fear anything, for you have loved so deeply you see no difference between your beloved and your God. Reading Sufi poets like Rumi, Shams and Yunus Emre I have found myself pick on their ideologies of love which have been the core reason for having myself write something both romantic and spiritual.
Thank you Vaani for sharing your fantastic poetry!
